Everything is Shit: Tracking the Great Enshittening

[ClubWhatever 12,120]

The term enshittification is itself an example of enshittification.  The English language is morphing into an extremely dumbed down version of German.  Every social concept has to have a crass, single word label, because nuance is not rewarded by anything.  And no, I don't have a clever label for what you are talking about.   It's just the evolution of capitalism.   The Panera Breadification of it.

[956 Worldwide 34,691]

2 minutes ago, MrBig said:

All of our gripes are the modern day equivalent of having a girlfriend who was giving BJs and left and right, and once you got hooked and put the ring on her finger you were lucky to get sex once a week. It’s the same as drug dealers giving free samples to get you hooked on something that is never going to be what it once was at the very beginning. 

Comparing services we pay for to frigid wives and crack dealers ain’t exactly a ringing defense though? 
 

Another example is cars and service subscriptions. Some of the worst of this has been walked back like BMW’s plan to charge a fee to unlock seat heating.

Now, there have always been stripper models and this may just seem like a new way to charge for premium features.  But it’s a bit more insidious and worse for us all— in the past, you just didn’t have the power windows on the car installed.

But with the new model, everyone gets the same bloated car with the same resources pumped in, but only some get actually used.  Pure resource waste. 

 

1 minute ago, ClubWhatever said:

The term enshittification is itself an example of enshittification.  The English language is morphing into an extremely dumbed down version of German.  Every social concept has to have a crass, single word label, because nuance is not rewarded by anything.  And no, I don't have a clever label for what you are talking about.   It's just the evolution of capitalism.   The Panera Breadification of it.

This is top-Surly, well done. 

[CooterBrown 18,001]

Ummm… I can navigate Google maps perfectly fine, and my favorite time waster is still dropping the street view guy random places seeing what’s around. Maybe you’re just getting old. 

The problem with Google Maps is the integration of Waze data behind the scenes. No, I don’t want to exit the highway and take back roads with 75 turns to save 1 minute of driving. It’s been fucked for several years now.

[Sandman 3,403]

32 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Social Media has made YOU aware of the uniformity, but it has always been that way. Before tik tok, there were fashion magazines. Before fashion magazines, there were Sunday paper advertisements. 

Ehh, I disagree. Yes, magazines and papers were widely available when I was a kid in the 80s but you had to seek them out. I couldn't lie in my bed and have that shit magically appear in front of me. Kids and young adults can be on the couch getting those ideas delivered to their phones with minimal effort. I don't see them walking or biking to 7-11 to buy the latest edition of Tiger Beat or Cosmo.

[miguelito 11,250]

I'm shitting right now. I shit you not.

I had fried chicken for lunch with cheesy mashed potatoes and poblano gravy.

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

I don't know if this counts per the original post, but I'm thoroughly unamused by the corporate marketing drive to app or 'join' everything. I say "No, thank you." Salesperson: "don't you want to save money by joining our program?"

I, of course, would like to save money. However, they turn around and sell that data (most do, but there are a few that don't). Or they want me to pay a yearly fee so that I will somehow feel compelled to buy stuff in order to make up for that fee. Again, no. With respect to online--show me the charges for shipping and I'll decide whether I want to buy the product, I'm cheap like that. But with local businesses having less and less inventory, it's getting slightly more difficult to do that. Healthcare is trending the same way with their large franchise operations now for dentist offices, etc. Makes one feel so secure knowing that the SSNs and (cashless systems) card #s are in the same databases that have some not great security.

 

With respect to maps, we made our children learn how to use paper maps because reasons and you'd have thought we were placing them in prison by their complaints. Kind of like when we made sure they could tell analog time, etc. Sometimes a person just needs to know how the concept originally was designed to work before it was improved or shittified.

[Neonmoon 38,129]

31 minutes ago, Sandman said:

Ehh, I disagree. Yes, magazines and papers were widely available when I was a kid in the 80s but you had to seek them out. I couldn't lie in my bed and have that shit magically appear in front of me. Kids and young adults can be on the couch getting those ideas delivered to their phones with minimal effort. I don't see them walking or biking to 7-11 to buy the latest edition of Tiger Beat or Cosmo.

[Helobious 9,461]

Things change, old people whine and complain instead of adapt. More breaking news at 10

[RDCanecutter 26,376]

1 hour ago, 'stache said:

The local AMC has the saddest looking little bar at the entrance. It's like a tiny liquor closet and they even put four bar stools there, like someone might just mosey up and sip some Jack Daniels at the AMC. 

Bookmarking this info for when I plan my Great American Vestigial Bar Tour.

[Francisco 2.0 32,385]

The Dead Milkmen said it best 35 years ago:

 

I ran into a friend of mine
And he said he was gonna take some words and make them rhyme
I said "You can fool some of them some of the time
But you can only fool half them all of the time"
He said "Yes I do believe this is true
Would you like to come and sniff some glue?
And we'll fly to where the skies are blue
And look for things both bright and new"

And on a pretty Sunday morning
A bunch of pretty Baptist girls
Linked their pretty hands and they sang
Life is shit, life is shit
The world is shit, the world is shit
This is life as I know it
This is life as I know it

And in the sky I saw Richard Nixon
Smoking a lacey with Mr. Dickson
He said "Son there's something I must say
I do believe I've found a better way"
And a vision came
And I knew it was Bob Crane
And Bob sang:

Life is shit, life is shit
The world is shit, the world is shit
This is life as I know it
This is life as I know it

[F250 28,760]

3 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

OP has tapped into one of the two massive hot buttons for me. One is wealth inequality, and the second is enshitification. He/She is absolutely right, and it’s not just the natural progression of services, markets, inflation, etc. 

What’s amplifying the trend is a lack of competition. There are a small number of very large companies with an absolute stranglehold over the consumer. These small number of competitors are systematically raising prices on their products and services, and lowering quality, because they can. 

Want internet? You’ve got one or two choices in most markets. Internet costs are going to go through the roof in the next few years. Streaming? There will only be a few that matter in a few years. Health Insurance? We are down to 4-5.

The US and the world has not effectively dealt with oligopolies and monopolies. And now they own the politicians too. This is going to get way worse before it gets better. Bend over. 

 

[TwiceHorn 31,429]

5 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

I agree with this.  It's the ultimate flaw with our new economy driven by VC and tech bro assholes.  None of it is really innovative, and most of it isn't even really business.  It's just unprofitable "disruption" to kill off competition.  Once that is accomplished, reality has to set in at some point.  It's not really innovative, and not really any different than what has gone on forever when a new player wants to take market share.  Undercut the legacy guys at a major loss until you capture enough market share to start driving up your prices.  The end result for the consumer is that things are exactly the same as they were before, with the only change being who is getting your money.

This relates in a lot of ways to patent ineligibility as concerns internet and computer inventions.

At its fundament (yes, I am alluding to assholes here), the internet is just a new delivery vehicle.  The content is the same as it always was:  text, photos, video, shit to buy, you're just seeing it in a new vehicle that is often easier to access and more convenient or just faster than the "old ways."

What is intended to be patent-ineligible is things like the shopping cart and other old methods that are just "internetted."  Nothing conceptually or abstractly new about them (except possibly in the algorithms that execute them), just on a new "medium."

The internet itself is innovative, but once the techniques of delivering content were perfected, there's nothing really new or innovative about the content. Or any of the content-providers.

But yeah, the VCs and tech bros, and media is complicit, are determined to sell us this bill of goods about disruptive and innovative technologies that really aren't that innovative.  And that, in turn, leads to weird economic incentives and financing that seems to violate "laws of capitalism." 

Or it's the revenue model or financing that's actually innovative, not much about the product itself.

And then, voila, cord cutting is no cheaper and no better experience than cable TV.

Edited December 29, 2023 by TwiceHorn

[elfenix 34,221]

3 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

This may be related to how you use it. Google maps is pretty good at turn by turn car directions.  It’s much shittier at being an actual map, which I use a lot as a frequent walker in cities that aren’t always familiar.  Screenshots below, one Google and one Apple. 
 

I don’t see any comparison: Apple has more street names, less clutter, and a simple search returned only things directly related to what I wanted and not unrelated shit.

Apple is shit in a lot of other places so I am not stanning Just pointing out that Google maps has gotten worse at being an actual, readable map. 
 

 

 

hate when i'm trying to zoom in or out on google maps and it thinks i'm selecting some bullshit point that it added. 

[mdmost 42,997]

 

[Macanudo 12,974]

4 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

OP has tapped into one of the two massive hot buttons for me. One is wealth inequality, and the second is enshitification. He/She is absolutely right, and it’s not just the natural progression of services, markets, inflation, etc. 

What’s amplifying the trend is a lack of competition. There are a small number of very large companies with an absolute stranglehold over the consumer. These small number of competitors are systematically raising prices on their products and services, and lowering quality, because they can. 

Want internet? You’ve got one or two choices in most markets. Internet costs are going to go through the roof in the next few years. Streaming? There will only be a few that matter in a few years. Health Insurance? We are down to 4-5.

The US and the world has not effectively dealt with oligopolies and monopolies. And now they own the politicians too. This is going to get way worse before it gets better. Bend over. 

This kind of encapsulates how I feel about American life.   We are all just consumsers.   Corporations don't give a fuck about their employees.   If a few pennies can be saved today by paring down the workforce in order to prop up the share price then they do it.  Regardless of whether they are forgoing real growth 2 or 3 years down the road that returns a significant amount more than was saved.   We have to drive that share prices up now! 

Christmas is a great example of this.   It's an economic event wrapped in "the reason for the season" bullshit.   It's understandable when smaller businesses dorve the economy but with the emergene of the monopolies and oligarchies, only a few really benefit.  

We're fucked as consumers and employees.  Corporations have had undue influence on politics for a long time but within the last 15-20 years they have gained such a huge advantage that average people don't matter.  With politicians doing corporate bidding over citizens, we're just fucked.

[Fudge Nuggets 19,184]

7 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

There are a few more previews, but the rest of the experience— from service to options to quality— is better. 

Yeah, but the movies themselves are way shittier. Unless you want to see the 5,000th remake of some stupid ass comic book. 

[TwiceHorn 31,429]

21 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Yeah, but the movies themselves are way shittier. Unless you want to see the 5,000th remake of some stupid ass comic book. 

Agreed.  The comic book movies are usually actually pretty decent entertainment, but I am in no way compelled to see them like I might be something else.

[Bevo 13,557]

12 hours ago, troph said:

I think it's a bit different. He saying your user experience is going to shit across all platforms and it's going to happen for systematic reasons. it's not a generational gap thing. It's more like saying same time, same place, different experience. to use an example from yesteryear, our land line rotary phones now have audio ads before a dial tone and before you can spin the phone number dial to call your friends.

Wait until you have to pay a yearly subscription for the tech in your car. It's coming - I have a relative who is head of IT for GM and he is super excited that IT will become a profit center at GM rather than a cost. Dealership service centers will be happy too as they will be able to dampen independent auto repair shop business and increase their prices. And I guarantee the second thing to happen will be the enshittening of your driving experience unless you pay up.

[Elvis 3,369]

No offense, but…

 

 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,570]

4 hours ago, Bevo said:

Wait until you have to pay a yearly subscription for the tech in your car. It's coming - I have a relative who is head of IT for GM and he is super excited that IT will become a profit center at GM rather than a cost. Dealership service centers will be happy too as they will be able to dampen independent auto repair shop business and increase their prices. And I guarantee the second thing to happen will be the enshittening of your driving experience unless you pay up.

Everything we've been able to do the last century must be computerized and digitized. It will malfunction. A lot. Needs updates. It needs needs sensors with a one year life span. It needs to be brought back to the dealer for service. Also needs your personal information, which will be hacked, and ability to track you. 

Edited December 29, 2023 by Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

[Viking 301]

Well, brace yourselves for the AI apocalypse, folks! The rise of AI-generated content is turning the internet into a dumpster fire, accelerating what we sarcastically dub the "Great Enshittening." As if the web wasn't already drowning in a sea of mediocrity, now AI is here to turbocharge the production of mindless drivel. The bots are taking over, and they seem to have a PhD in producing garbage. Say goodbye to thoughtful discussions and quality content; the future of the internet is looking more enshittened than ever before. Cheers to the golden age of mind-numbing online experiences!

 

(This was generated by ChatGPT. The first version was a lecture on the possible good that AI content could bring but redirecting it via "That's nice but make it more negative like you'd see in a post on a message board filled with GenXers that are surly." hit the right tone.)

[Pato del Muerto 52,484]

20 hours ago, Armybrat said:

moving picture show - a dime 
drive in picture show - $1 a car load 
gas - 0.20/gal

Hide and seek on the south mall- priceless

[Goredho 17,394]

Most successful companies with a size > 200 employees are lesser than the sum of their parts, riding the success of some lightning-in-a-bottle happenstance and frantically trying to trap lightning-in-a-bottle again to keep investors satiated.  Most of the companies mentioned in this thread rode the internet birthing pool wave to success and are now slothful corporate behemoths suffering under their own weight.  So I think this convergence of enshittification, at least as described in this thread, is a baby boom of intardnet companies getting to be middle aged and living off their achievements from their 20s and 30s.  Soon enough they will be wanting their medicare and social security.

[FartingMonk 3,606]

Yeah.  It is easier to make something with 20 people than it is to maintain something with 80,000 employees.  The FB data base is at something like 1 billion users a day.  That's a lot of maintaining.  Monetization is a driver but it is also to put out a good end user product.  I hate ads but without ads you'd have to pay for it.  Then everyone is bitching that they have to pay for stuff.  

[babysdaddy 2,719]

23 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Inspired by news and different threads here, starting a place to track and chronicle the Great Enshittening of the internet. Basically, how the internet (and other industries) are getting terrible, usually because of this process:

We are all familiar with Facebook, and I don’t count Twitter which was made shitty on purpose with no economic rationale.  But there is enshittification creep. A few examples:

1. Amazon Prime: Starting in January, you get ads with Prime. And unlike Netflix (also shittified), they aren’t rolling out a discount “ads” package, they will just upsell you for ad-free. 
 

Not just streaming. Anyone else notice the frequent “Get it tomorrow” bait that changes to a different date once it’s in your cart?

2. Google: Google’s search decline is well chronicled, but it’s creeping to other  aspects.  Google Maps is more and more crap.  There’s all the irrelevant paid ads that return hotels and restaurants even when not searching, cluttering the screen. And the photo pins, which don’t tell you about a business but use a worthless photo. Apple Maps is actually better now. 
 

I’m going to be super interested in watching AI platforms.  I already think they’re getting enshittified in real time. 

I was scrolling and waiting for the captainant self fellatio post but leaving disappointed.

 

Know this is about the internet but a very real experience happened to me with a gym.  Started off nice gym with child care included, then charged for child care, then increased prices, then removed child care, then raised prices again, then reduced number of available gyms.  that's when I dumped it.

Edited December 29, 2023 by babysdaddy

[Bevo 13,557]

49 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

Yeah.  It is easier to make something with 20 people than it is to maintain something with 80,000 employees.  The FB data base is at something like 1 billion users a day.  That's a lot of maintaining.  Monetization is a driver but it is also to put out a good end user product.  I hate ads but without ads you'd have to pay for it.  Then everyone is bitching that they have to pay for stuff.  

 

The ads are crap, too. Your hair will grow like crazy, try this! I have plenty of hair on my head and I shave my balls so why do I want to click through on your stupid as shit idea? And how the fuck does this "idea" make money anyway?

And what the fuck is up with everything being a hack? No, that's not a cheesecake hack. It is called a fucking recipe. You can even find them online if you bothered to do a search. And no that's not a diabetes hack. It's a fucking diet you fat fuck. As a matter of fact, if I hear that word "hack" one more time, I'm gonna set up a tiktok trap in my yard to catch all the youngins in my neighborhood and send them on a flight hack to another country.

[Bevo 13,557]

2 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

I was scrolling and waiting for the captainant self fellatio post but leaving disappointed.

 

Know this is about the internet but a very real experience happened to me with a gym.  Started off nice gym with child care included, then charged for child care, then increased prices, then removed child care, then raised prices again, then reduced number of available gyms.  that's when I dumped it.

Edited just now by babysdaddy

Username does not check out.

[FartingMonk 3,606]

5 minutes ago, Bevo said:

 

The ads are crap, too. Your hair will grow like crazy, try this! I have plenty of hair on my head and I shave my balls so why do I want to click through on your stupid as shit idea? And how the fuck does this "idea" make money anyway?

And what the fuck is up with everything being a hack? No, that's not a cheesecake hack. It is called a fucking recipe. You can even find them online if you bothered to do a search. And no that's not a diabetes hack. It's a fucking diet you fat fuck. As a matter of fact, if I hear that word "hack" one more time, I'm gonna set up a tiktok trap in my yard to catch all the youngins in my neighborhood and send them on a flight hack to another country.

You know the ads are targeted.  Are you trying to find a cheesecake hack or something while growing out your hair?

[Bevo 13,557]

11 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

You know the ads are targeted.  Are you trying to find a cheesecake hack or something while growing out your hair?

If they are targeted, they are truly poor with their analytics. I may search medical articles, but I have no desire to learn about "hair" hacks. Anyway, most of those ads don't seemed targeted, they are one of a handful that Solitaire repeats or are part of a link from the Ukraine thread. And again if those ads truly are targeted, their analytics are wacked because I don't even care about that stuff or what Molly Ringwald looks like now.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Bevo

[Brisketexan 105,035]

1 minute ago, Bevo said:

because I don't even care about that stuff or what Molly Ringwald looks like now.

Commie.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Brisketexan

[Da Fino 2,772]

21 hours ago, Helobious said:

Ummm… I can navigate Google maps perfectly fine, and my favorite time waster is still dropping the street view guy random places seeing what’s around. Maybe you’re just getting old. 

https://www.google.com.br/maps/@-23.5170989,-46.6726481,3a,15y,342.2h,77.81t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3zXQ0aOuBgq7tWkJX8olGQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@12.9455471,100.8845704,2a,34.3y,85.68h,84.04t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sE5mXeKI20wZ2kOAlbRqg-Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?entry=ttu

 

[Celery Man 20,929]

21 hours ago, CHAD BRISCOE said:

Inside the have those Big Pump's 

 

[wild_turkey 3,159]

No, that's not a cheesecake hack. It is called a fucking recipe. You can even find them online if you bothered to do a search.

Speaking of online recipes, why is it that every online recipe now requires me to scroll past a 12 paragraph story about how someone’s grandmother used to make XYZ and it smelled so good, scroll past the ads, then get the steps of the recipe without any specific ingredients, then scroll past more ads, then find the actual ingredients at the very bottom before an ad pops up to cover them? I don’t want the story, and please put the ingredients first.

[Bevo 13,557]

8 minutes ago, BeardIP said:

https://bradislava.medium.com/why-do-food-bloggers-tell-long-stories-before-the-recipe-235f735187ba

and it is Bratislava, goddamnit.

[Thatguy 8,671]

On 12/28/2023 at 2:42 PM, Samson's Wig said:

I agree with this.  It's the ultimate flaw with our new economy driven by VC and tech bro assholes.  None of it is really innovative, and most of it isn't even really business.  It's just unprofitable "disruption" to kill off competition.  Once that is accomplished, reality has to set in at some point.  It's not really innovative, and not really any different than what has gone on forever when a new player wants to take market share.  Undercut the legacy guys at a major loss until you capture enough market share to start driving up your prices.  The end result for the consumer is that things are exactly the same as they were before, with the only change being who is getting your money.

Toyota-Honda

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,570]

Just got off the phone with Dish who said I needed to update my equipment at "no charge". The catch is you must commit to a 2 year equipment agreement while the "special customer promotional rate" for my subscription (a nominal monthly increase instead of the price gouging they attempted) that I got when I threatened to cut the cord months ago runs out in 9 months.

The upshot- in 9 months when they try to jack up the price again and if I do cut the service in response, they get to charge me 300 bucks for breaking the "equipment agreement". So I just told them to keep the new equipment and I'll cancel when the old equipment craps out. 

[gurt 748]

What technological breakthrough has there been in the past twenty years that has markedly improved daily life? I’m sure there are medical treatments that have gotten much better, but otherwise I struggle to think of any. Is my life really better by having the internet in my hands at all times, leaving me with the attention span of a goldfish? Social media we know conclusively is bad for society. Has data analytics done anything except reduce everything I like into a number and taking away any human touch? Will machine learning/AI do anything but allow companies to do things more efficiently at the expense of human interaction?

I find myself slowly turning into Ted Kaczynski, minus the whole sending bombs in the mail part. The galling part is that I work in software…oh well it pays the bills.

[gurt 748]

Renewables and batteries have improved greatly, as well I do suppose

[rpspeed 1,360]

Stolen from reddit

Come pay 24.99 per month to watch the new season of your favorite show. When you want it, how you want it. That's right for just 25.99 you can watch all the seasons of the abruptly cancelled favorite show that ended with a cliffhanger. For the cost of only 26.99 you can grow to love new characters, and then mourn them as their distribution rights are pulled by another large mega studio. For just 27.99 though, with an additional 14.99 you can enjoy other great shows and your favorite characters spread across 2 amazing platforms. Act now and get 3 months for just $85 +$2.99 ad free!!


and personally I miss the days of no sales tax and two day shipping.

[Guest]

On 12/28/2023 at 5:21 PM, Neonmoon said:

Social Media has made YOU aware of the uniformity, but it has always been that way. Before tik tok, there were fashion magazines. Before fashion magazines, there were Sunday paper advertisements. 

Yep. Made me think of the Coca Cola shirt fads in the 80’s. People do that shit so they can feel like they belong to something.  It has existed for a long ass time before fucking Facebook.

[Celery Man 20,929]

9 hours ago, gurt said:

What technological breakthrough has there been in the past twenty years that has markedly improved daily life? I’m sure there are medical treatments that have gotten much better, but otherwise I struggle to think of any. Is my life really better by having the internet in my hands at all times, leaving me with the attention span of a goldfish? Social media we know conclusively is bad for society. Has data analytics done anything except reduce everything I like into a number and taking away any human touch? Will machine learning/AI do anything but allow companies to do things more efficiently at the expense of human interaction?

I find myself slowly turning into Ted Kaczynski, minus the whole sending bombs in the mail part. The galling part is that I work in software…oh well it pays the bills.

[troph 24,781]

If been thinking about this more. I think the answer is reading books (real ones), going outside and art. Make art, experience art. Humans were made to create and experience art, being in nature has tremendous health benefits. I’m more and more convinced opting out is the right answer. 

[956 Worldwide 34,691]

20 minutes ago, troph said:

If been thinking about this more. I think the answer is reading books (real ones), going outside and art. Make art, experience art. Humans were made to create and experience art, being in nature has tremendous health benefits. I’m more and more convinced opting out is the right answer. 

But AI art is art /weirdos 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13,570]

8 minutes ago, troph said:

If been thinking about this more. I think the answer is reading books (real ones), going outside and art. Make art, experience art. Humans were made to create and experience art, being in nature has tremendous health benefits. I’m more and more convinced opting out is the right answer. 

Books is the one of the first things I thought of as a replacement when cutting the cord. Usually tv is on as background noise, barely have time for it anyway, and the little free time is stolen through periodic haggling, being begged to take a survey, fending off a scam, dealing with a 3rd party payroll site that doesn't work, maintaining a password list, changing banks accounts due to notifications my personal data's been breached.. 

[troph 24,781]

16 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

But AI art is art /weirdos 

AI is what made me put books on the list.

9 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Books is the one of the first things I thought of as a replacement when cutting the cord. Usually tv is on as background noise, barely have time for it anyway, and the little free time is stolen through periodic haggling, being begged to take a survey, fending off a scam, dealing with a 3rd party payroll site that doesn't work, maintaining a password list, changing banks accounts due to notifications my personal data's been breached.. 

I have an unending to do list of menial shit. I will probably put that to do list in my will as a joke.

[Hefeweizen 5,308]

Doing my part this year.  Read 80 books, more than double previous years, eliminated xitter browsing, cancelled Netflix, and am about to cancel Apple premium for cost cutting.  Trying to limit screen time to the bare minimum, and increase hobby time along with being outside.  It may mean a little less surliness for me.

[BrazilHorn 6,586]

The UX changes to Prime both via their streaming site and the Kindle store are awful. 
 

The rebranding of Max from the HBO/Max also awful. 
 

Needlessly complicated and annoying to use. 

[Guest]

On 12/28/2023 at 2:42 PM, Samson's Wig said:

I agree with this.  It's the ultimate flaw with our new economy driven by VC and tech bro assholes.  None of it is really innovative, and most of it isn't even really business.  It's just unprofitable "disruption" to kill off competition.  Once that is accomplished, reality has to set in at some point.  It's not really innovative, and not really any different than what has gone on forever when a new player wants to take market share.  Undercut the legacy guys at a major loss until you capture enough market share to start driving up your prices.  The end result for the consumer is that things are exactly the same as they were before, with the only change being who is getting your money.

Charlie don’t surf…

but he drives our economy?

[956 Worldwide 34,691]

One thing to ponder, basically anything written before ChatGPT (that you know was written by a human) is going to become steadily more valuable. Especially non-fiction and how-to type content. 

[Celery Man 20,929]

I don’t subscribe to the Atlantic and can no longer read this full article, but I felt highly seen. About Wirecutter, it’s ubiquity as the millennial suggestion engine, and how it is not what it was

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/08/wirecutter-recommendations-worse-new-york-times/675075/